Friday Favourites – Mother’s Day, Our First Anniversary Dinner & Long Weekend Daydreaming

Happy Long Weekend Friday! It’s the Victoria Day weekend here in Canada, which is always one of my favourite summer holidays, partly because Queen Victoria and I share a birthday (May 24th!), but also because it’s the official kick off of summer. The weather might not be here yet and kids still have another five weeks of school, but you better believe we’re going to make the most of this time between now and September.

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Mother’s Day – We had a really nice Mother’s Day visiting our families. We started off the morning picking up Garrett’s Nana and taking her over to his parents’ house for fresh baked muffins (I used this recipe and swapped the raisins for dark chocolate chips)

 

When we arrived they surprised us with a forsythia bush for the farmhouse. Come next spring, this thing will be covered in bright yellow leaves. I can’t wait to find a spot to plant it. We’ve already accumulated a collection of plants and clippings from family and friends. Now we just have to do a little bit of landscape planning to figure out where it should all go.

 In the afternoon we headed over to my parents’ place for a bbq dinner and one of my sister’s epic cakes. This rich chocolate cake was so good, especially with a scoop of french vanilla ice cream.

Right after we heated up the barbecue, it started to rain really hard. Garrett was son-in-law of the year when he agreed to head out with a huge golf umbrella and man the grill.

First Anniversary Dinner: We celebrated our anniversary a day later, with a quiet dinner out on Monday night. We dressed up and I wore my earrings from the wedding. We went to The Keg for dinner because not only do they have awesome steaks, but they’re really good about my peanut and nut allergy. The manager personally delivered all our food and kept coming back to make sure everything was okay.

One of our favourite parts is the freshly baked bread they bring to the table. It’s ridiculously good and I always end up eating more than I should. I can’t usually eat bread at restaurants due to cross contamination for my allergies, but they make theirs safe.

Our steaks were awesome. Garrett had the prime rib in honour of our wedding dinner, and I went with a blacked sirloin.

 

We were both absolutely stuffed at the end, but they surprised us with a nut-free creme brulee for dessert because it was our anniversary. I rarely eat dessert out (again, because of the allergies) so this was a real treat.

Back at home with already had our complimentary anniversary cake from the cake lady waiting for us, but we didn’t get into it until the next day. There was no way I could have another bite – not even for cake! We’ve been enjoying it every night this week.

Long Weekend Dreaming – They’re calling for hot temperatures and rain this weekend, so I’m not quite sure what we’ll do. If the weather can hold off, my dad and I are planning to paint their back porch. After doing the pool deck last summer, we realized the porch could use some fresh paint too. It’s good practice for all the painting all be doing at our own house!

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Do you have any fun plans for this weekend? Whatever you do, I hope it’s a good one!